“DRC undermines Lusaka peace agreement” - Rwanda envoy

Rwanda has accused the DRC government of trying to use every possible means, including provocation, to sabotage implementation of the Lusaka peace agreement. A letter from Rwanda’s permanent representative to the UN, Anastase Gasana, to the president of the UN Security Council, stated that Rwanda was responding to a letter from the DRC, dated 13 July, which was “provocative and slanderous”. In the letter, the DRC representative at the UN accused Rwanda and its rebel ally Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) of having a hidden agenda in eastern DRC and of trying to “annexe” the territory. “Launching such a virulent attack on two of the signatories to the Lusaka peace agreement on the basis of delusions of secession, constitutes a deliberate attempt to thwart the implementation of the Lusaka peace agreement that we all have signed voluntarily,” the Rwandan letter said. It accused the DRC government of “burying its head in the sand” over the nationality issue regarding ethnic Congolese Tutsis, the Banyamulenge, in eastern DRC. “Rwanda would like to clearly recall, once and for all, that it will not continue to tolerate the existence along its borders of people denied their right to nationality by their own country,” the letter stated. “The DRC should ... start assuming all its responsibilities in this regard so as to settle, once and for all, the issue of nationality which, apart from being a source of conflict and insecurity in DRC, also affects neighbouring countries such as Rwanda.”